Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 1st August 2008
1 COMMENT 
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Yesterday Firef.ly went into open beta. In case you were wondering: .LY is the top level domain extension for Lybia.
Firefly is officially a chat service but could just as easily be describes as ‘Twitter on other sites’. Site owners add two lines of Javascript to their pages and get a widget that gives their users the option to add little floating text balloons on pages.
The service looks very simple to use and extremely cute. All images are shiny and well designed and installation and usage are very simple. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that contrary to Twitter the chat is extremely fragmented. Competitors to Twitter never take off because everybody keeps coming back to Twitter. Firef.ly is everywhere an might as well be nowhere.
Then there is the debatable value of the comments. It is a problem that affects a lot of annotation, (DISCLOSURE: I started Fleck.com, another annotation service) chat and comment services. Given the chance to say something it often turns out that most people don’t actually have anything to say. As you can see in the screenshot a typical Firef.ly enriched site generates a bit of uninteresting buzz on a page but hardly any meaningful conversation.
That doesn’t mean the whole service is useless though. If you have a site with a large userbase and tight community it might be interesting to see what happens if you add Firef.ly to your website. Give it a try and let us know how it works for you.
Written on 3rd July 2008
4 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Our – really beloved sponsor – Wakoopa (the Last.fm of software) has launched some new widgets today. From now on, it’s possible to express yourself by showing off your software usage. To let people know you’re the Firefox-kinda-guy or a Flock-chick, you basically have three new – or improved – options.
- Badge – show your blog or social profile visitors your most popular, recently added or recently used software.
- Forum-like signature – show your fellow forum members what you’re doing beside commenting on endless discussion
- Card – small card, modeled after the famous Xfire ones, that shows your avatar and some software data, like the two most used programs (always your browser + something else)
These three types of widgets fascinate me. Apparently there are people out there who use their software data as a way to express themselves. Most boys and girls let their blog and profile visitors know who they are by showing the music they like (Last.fm) or the books they read (Amazon), yet now software enters the stage of self-expression. In a way, it makes sense. 30,000 geeky early adopters – like me – we’re already watching each others software usage within the safe surroundings of Wakoopa, so why not take it outside as well?
Moreover, just like you see fellas walking around with a shirt of their favorite band, some guys now also wear Firefox jackets or Linux hats. One thing I don’t see happening though, is a poster of your favorite app above your bed.
There’s a fourth widget too, with which developers can show much Wakoopa members use your program. Want to create your own Wakoopa widget? Here’s the API.
Written on 6th June 2008
2 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Netvibes’ chief architect François Hodierne announced the opening of netvibes.org, a website dedicated to Netvibes’ Open Source projects: “By giving away our technology, we hope to foster innovations in the widget and personal-page space, and launch a discussion about their wide implementation.” Netvibes widgets are based on UWA, the Netvibes Universal Widget API. ‘Universal’ since UWA-based widgets run on any platform that supports common Web standards (HTML/JavaScript/CSS). That means iGoogle too.
Netvibes.org is basically a sneak-preview of what’s really coming as the Netvibes developers need some more feedback before the project officially launches. Developers who want to give UWA a try, can work on three projects now:
- The UWA JavaScript Runtime: JavaScript libraries that make it possible to run UWA widgets
- The PHP Exposition libraries: make it possible to parse and compile UWA widgets
- The Exposition widget server: makes it possible to serve widgets to users, notably within an iframe.
I love the paradox of open source. Netvibes says it “gives away” their technology, yet they will probably never turn the personalized homepage into a open source project. Thus what Netvibes (and most other web companies do), is giving away little pieces of the technology – almost everything but the core technology -, so more service-related widgets will flood the web. That gives them a) a better image and b) more functionality.
Written on 3rd April 2008
10 COMMENTS
Anne Helmond, hard bloggin' scientist
Khris Loux is CEO and co-founder of JS-Kit, a start-up company that provides widgets to easily add interactivity to your site:
Our simple, modular and fully customizable web-services, also known as “widgets”, are fast becoming the building blocks of rich, interactive online experiences for leading-edge web sites. These solutions are self-service, elegant, powerful, and easily deployed by HTML neophytes, experts and everyone in between.
Widgets are often referred to as the “bling bling” of Web 2.0 but JS-Kit takes the next step in widget development by providing customizable services which complement and build on each other. Loux’s talk titled “Web 3.0 or Web 3D?, The Decentralization, Disaggregation and Democratization of the Web” deals with the new dimension that widgets add to the web.
JS-kit provides simple lightweight web applications, widgets, that add rich interactive features to any site or blog. This is done by simply copying and pasting a piece of code in order to experience an Amazon class service. By lowering the technical and financial bar they allow smaller companies to compete with major services. JS-Kit addresses the long tail of business so a startup does not need to spend precious money on programmers to add customer interactivity to their site. In fact, their services are so light-weight that even big companies such as Yahoo use them on some parts of their site. Yahoo developers said they chose to use the JS-Kit widgets because they are so easy to use.
The next phase on the web
If Web 1.0 was about publishers teaching the truth and Web 2.0 revolved around bloggers balancing out the web then Web 3.0 is about publishers joining the conversation and consumers becoming part of the business. The structure of the web is changing and Web 3.0 concerns itself with connecting cross-points. Loux compares the evolution of the web with the human brain which is amazingly good at connecting distributed information.
Loux presents a somewhat utopian vision where search is replaced with a process where “everything that you needed would be right there.” SEO is a treadmill because we are all playing the same game and everyone is getting better at it. We need to skip SEO and advertising and instead take the true value of the product and spread it out. Widgets allow you to spread information out and bind relevant information.
Trust
Companies need to bridge the credibility gap by making the potential buyer be aware of the status of the transaction before it is actually made. Widgets allow customers to rate products or even rate the company. Where would you rather buy your products? With a company which has been rated reliable or with a company whose status is unknown? By making the whole process is more transparent both companies and buyers win. Trust, user ratings, transparency and user interaction are important factors in the direction the web is currently taking.
Open standards
Ownership is also an important issue on the distributed web as you should have a right to you own content. Social networks trap your content in their sites and you do not get paid for it. The value of their site is their idea filled with your content but where is the download button, where is the “I want to leave now and take all my stuff” button? Loux notes that it is hard to get the legal community involved in these questions. In the long term we need a Creative Commons style licensing to have a balanced relationship with these sites. In order to prevent stifled innovation we need open standards.
As a consumer we should demand OpenID access and be able to take our data out. Loux states that we should challenge the big companies and blog about open standards. Especially start-ups should embrace open standards because they are in the long tail of business. According to Loux startups can change the currently closed social network environment by adopting open standards. Startups are the new generation based on open standards. Startups can avoid the closed business cycle by taking up the power and empower the community.
Startups in the long tail hold the power to embrace open standards and challenge the big companies.
Written on 27th March 2008
0 COMMENTS
Ayelet Noff, Next Web WebTipr Israel
Asi Sharabi has written his second report on Facebook Applications Trends. You can see my post regarding his first report here. I find Asi’s reports to be extremely interesting and useful. 
Any person/company that’s currently offering or plans to offer an application on Facebook, should definitely read both reports to get an idea on “what’s hot and what’s not” as far as apps go. In the first report Asi focused on the 100 most popular apps according to number of installs. This report focuses on the apps that have the highest number of active users. Looking at these apps allows us to truly understand what makes a sustainable Facebook app. All data in the post is taken from adonomics , an amazing site which provides all sorts of great statistics regarding Facebook applications.
Asi writes:
As some people have already noted there is a sense of ‘apps fatigue’ and this indeed reflected in the data. Still, according to recent report while there is for the first time a slow decrease in the apps fair, on average 51% Facebook users interacted with FB apps pages in January.”
Most of the prevalent, multi-million installs apps have fairly low percentage of active users. Evidently, it is one thing to create a ‘viral’ application and get loads of users to install it (which occasionally been achieved with some dirty tricks and is getting increasingly difficult), but it is a different thing altogether to create a sustainable application, i.e. application that’s not just a passing gimmick but one that offer lasting value that people keep using over time.
I think that part of the reason why users are fatigued by Facebook apps is because there are very few apps that offer users real added value. Succeeding in getting people to install your app is great. But that’s only the first step. The real challenge lies in creating a sustainable application which people will actively use.
There are currently 20,861 applications on Facebook (140 apps are uploaded daily). Only about 170 apps have over 1 million users. About 800 have 100K to 1 million users, around 2200 have 10K – 100K users, around 4300 have 1K – 10k users, which leaves us with about 13,000+ apps with less than 1K users. (more…)
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
